Diverse mobile application suite. Surprisingly fast, regardless of the task. Automatically transcodes dozens of media formats to play on many popular smartphones. Sophisticated permissions options. Shines on the Apple iPhone.

Cons

Mobile apps are stripped-down compared with native competitors. Could give users more handholding when they're getting started. Still a cool idea in search of a market.

Bottom Line

Glide Mobile is a great concept, and the service does a lot of impressive tricks, but it's difficult,perhaps impossible, to make the switch as yet now.

Many months have passed since we last reviewed Glide Effortless, the previous incarnation of Glide, which first introduced Glide Mobile. Now with a slick new interface, the desktop-browser version of the suite is cooler than ever. Meanwhile, Glide Mobile has come into its own, with the ability to create, edit, or otherwise access your files from dozens of smartphones running different operating systems. That's a neat trick, but Glide the idea is still more impressive than Glide the practical solution.

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Basically, Glide wants to replace your desktop platform. As with Google Docs & Spreadsheets and other online application suites, the only local software you need is a Web browser. Everything else is kept "up in the cloud," which is how Glide employees refer to their servers. You can imagine the cyberpunk-like possibilities: work on documents, stream videos, share them with everyone, and do it all online, from any computer or any device, without regard for file types or which apps are opening them on the other side. That's pretty incredible, given that today's average MP3 player won't play a song you bought from iTunes and a song you purchased from Napster.

To get started, fire up your desktop browser, create a Glide account at www.glidedigital.com, and then head to www.glidemobile.com on your cell phone. Dozens of models are known to work, and from the back end, Glide figures out which model you're using and adjusts everything to fit your handset's screen. There's no client to install. Accounts with 2GB of space are free, though an additional 10GB costs $49.99 per year.

Although Glide uses a combination of AJAX, Flash, and HTML with desktop browsers, it sticks mostly to HTML in Glide Mobile for compatibility purposes. Taking a page out of the iPhone's book, Glide Mobile's new interface displays a list of applications on its home page, arranged as a series of icons. By clicking on the appropriate iconWrite, Present, E-mail, Chat, and so onyou can get to work almost immediately, doing or creating almost anything you'd want to do with a regular computer. Some of the cross-platform possibilities are enchanting. For example, if you create a Web site with Glide, it also creates a mobile version of that site simultaneously. Take that,
Adobe Device Central!
There are options for editing photos, creating Web sites, maintaining your calendar and contacts, and more; too much, in fact, for me to address here.

I tested Glide Mobile on an iPhone over Wi-Fi, a Motorola Q over EV-DO, and a Nokia E62 over EDGE. During my tests, I played lots of songs and videos, created documents, shared them, and generally played in the fun sandbox that is the Glide universe. With some caveats, particularly with the E62 (see below), videos played back smooth as silk, music sounded clear, photos looked great, and working on documents in a collaborative "online" sense was generally enjoyable.

In fact, sharing files with other users is as simple as clicking Share, choosing your recipient, and sending it off. Glide mails the link, rather than the whole attachment, since the file is already on Glide's server. Glide also offers an impressive array of permissions options. When you share files with others, you can decide if they can make changes, how many times they can view it, and more, all with simple drop-down menus. You can do all of this from your phone's browser, too; there's no need to be at a PC.

Still, I found myself jumping back to my desktop PC pretty often, because the Glide Mobile versions of Glide's applications are extremely stripped-down. Glide Mobile Write, for example, is essentially a blank text box, even though the app looks a lot closer to a late-1980s version of Microsoft Word on the Mac when viewed through a desktop browser. Another example: With Glide Mobile, you can view, create, and edit Excel spreadsheets, but the spreadsheet applet lacks so many features that Treo owners won't be abandoning DataViz's Documents To Go any time soon.

The quality of my experience with Glide Mobile depended on the phone. On the Apple iPhone's high-resolution screenwhich has twice the resolution of the othersit was breathtaking, and videos expanded to fill the iPhone's vast LCD. The Q's data network responded quickly, but the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile browser made creating new projects a joke. Remember that "blank text box" interface for Glide Mobile Write I mentioned above? On the Q, it became a single line. On the plus side, the Q streamed Windows Media music quite well, though you should be careful not to navigate away from the Windows Media page or you won't be able to stop the music from playing.

Using the Nokia E62, on the other hand, was a disaster. EDGE served up Glide's pages very slowly, and the browser frequently choked. Several times I became stuck in a repeating sea of prompts about viewing objects on secure pages. I also saw an unhealthy number of prompts that read, "the Requested Page can not [sic] be displayed." Streaming music also wasn't possible either. The E62 insisted on saving the stream file somewhere in its folder tree and then forgetting about it, rather than just playing the damn song.

Although the desktop suite is coming along nicely, Glide Mobile really needs further interface development. Many times I became lost six or seven pages in and had to fiddle with Safari's Back key and several Home links on different pages before I found the top level again. And it took several clicks too many before I could play or view files, a complaint I also had with Avvenu's system on mobile devices. I also ran into some glitches, such as misplaced text that stuck around on the iPhone even after I had backspaced over it, presumably because of problems dealing with the iPhone's autocorrect feature.

As a Glide spokesperson put it, Glide wants to be the Switzerland of technology. In other words, buy whatever device you want and choose whatever cellular network you want, because Glide will take care of making sure all of your files work properly. Glide is betting that once people experience the convenience and security of having access to their files all the time, they're not going to want to go back.

Glide Mobile poses an interesting question. Now that we're living in the post-iPhone world, with its Safari-based development environment, do we want to move toward browser-based applications on mobile phones? Glide Mobile's technology is certainly impressive, but it feels like an engineering exercise, however robust the back end is. Also, moving my entire digital life over to Glide would be a daunting challenge, to say the least. Despite their advantages, the apps are too stripped-down, although I can't help but admire the company's efforts.

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About the Author

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Pri... See Full Bio

Glide Mobile (beta)

Glide Mobile (beta)

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